Can F2F classes go digital?

 

      For this week's assignment, we were tasked with looking at courses in our schools that could be redesigned to be online courses. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that any class can be converted to an online format.  In fact, teachers are doing this every day to accommodate their virtual learners. For many students, virtual learning is their new reality for many different reasons, and our teachers are stepping up and accommodating them brilliantly. AVID and College and Career Reading are two such courses that can be designed for online learning. 

           AVID is a college and career readiness program that is geared toward the academic middle. This class requires students to be enrolled in at least one course of rigor (Pre-AP, AP or Advanced). This class supports students by helping them with organization and time management skills, writing and critical reading skills, and interpersonal skills. One major piece of all AVID classes is AVID tutorials. Tutors are hired to come into the class twice a week and facilitate a sort of Socratic seminar to help them with their academic classes. Students come prepared with a Tutorial Request Form (TRF) which helps students organize their thinking and drill down to the part of the problem that is confusing or troublesome. This class is a challenge to turn into an online course, but it can be done using interactive tools such as Google meets for virtual tutorials and Google Sites or Slides to build digital notebooks. Most assignments, including the TRF, can be digitized using various apps and tools. Furthermore, due the COVID pandemic, hundreds of colleges and universities have developed virtual tours of their campuses, which allows students to their favorite colleges from the comfort of their own homes.  Moreover, guest speakers can join our class via Zoom or Google Meet, and the students can type questions into the chat, or click the raise hand button to ask questions. 

         College and Career Readiness is a class that prepares 8th graders for college by helping students discover their interests and passions and introducing them to the many high school endorsements and tracks they choose from. These endorsements have been developed to help students gain experience in their areas of interest, thereby paving the way for entry into their chosen college or career path. This class is one that can easily be turned into an online course. Edpuzzle makes it easy to turn any video into a lesson. PearDeck can also be used to turn slides into interactive and collaborative lessons. Every unit can be taught exclusively online, while the teacher facilitates via web conference on a daily or weekly basis. In this instance, the teacher becomes not only a facilitator, but also a valuable resource that students can utilize when they need clarification on lessons and concepts. Teachers can also utilize apps such as Screencastify to record how-to videos or visual aides, and other apps such as Quizlet and Gimkit that can help students learn vocabulary and other facts through the various interactive games and challenges that these kinds of apps have to offer.  Furthermore, there are dozens of  free quality apps and extensions  that teachers can utilize, as well as many more that can be paid for by the district for educational use. In today’s digital world, there are many ways for any class to be redesigned for use as an online course.